…and reminds us why we were happy when he went two months without holding one.

By the way, the headline is a reference to Ed Klein’s outstanding book about Obama – the product of over 200 interviews Klein did with the president’s supporters, colleagues, mentors and others, many of whom have had it with him and are now dishing the dirt. The book goes about 260 pages and it’s a very fast read; on a Kindle it can easily be wiped out in about six hours.

Klein’s book puts a spotlight on the same stuff Obama’s press conference makes clear – first, that Obama will lie with an impunity that would make Bill Clinton blush. Klein has an interesting story in the book about Obama’s relationship with the Kennedys which culminates in Caroline Kennedy calling him “a liar, and worse” – and the book is replete with examples of the president deliberately spinning falsehoods.

Hell, the whole 2008 campaign was nothing but hot air. All lies. He wasn’t lying when he said he was out to fundamentally transform America; that was legitimate. But everything else? All the specifics of how that was going to happen? None of it was true.

And today’s press conference. “We don’t go out of bounds?” “We never called Romney a felon?” Who does he think he’s fooling?

Naturally, Obama didn’t give the media fair warning he was going to show up for the press conference, so they didn’t have a chance to prepare questions for him. Which is why they look like such complete lapdogs when he throws out a constant stream of lies about how Mitt Romney is lying about his wiping out work requirements for welfare but nothing Obama says is untrue.

The second thing in Klein’s book which comes out loud and clear in today’s press conference is the complete abandonment of all that Hope and Change stuff. There is no pretension of a positive campaign anymore, which Klein’s book said was coming. And today Obama basically defended the fact that his campaign is one negative attack after another.

And the third thing, which is a major theme of Klein’s book, is that Obama has no semblance of the temperament a president requires. The Amateur is replete with examples of how Obama and his Chicago thug inner circle have operated with a reckless impunity since he took the Oval Office which has appalled not only the adults in Washington but even a lot of his former supporters. For example, there’s the story of Oprah Winfrey – remember her? Oprah was one of the most influential people in American media, if not THE most influential person. And then she threw her weight behind Obama, without which he more than likely wouldn’t have beaten Hillary Clinton in the Democrat primary. Ultimately, that decision cost her a sizable chunk of her audience and it hamstrung the launch of her cable network – which has been hemorrhaging money since she began it, costing her millions and millions of dollars.

For such a sacrifice, you’d think Oprah would get a little bit of access. After all, during the campaign Obama had her on speed dial and they would talk all the time. But according to Klein, Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett, who his sources say sit in the residence of the White House every afternoon and essentially run the country, got together and decided that they didn’t want Oprah to have any influence on Obama – so she had the door slammed in her face. She didn’t even get an interview with them until February of 2009, nearly four months after the election. And since then, almost nothing at all.

The impression one gets from anecdotes like that – and there are lots of them – is that this is a president and a White House team which is incredibly small, petty and lacking in character.

Obama’s press conference today was no different. Here he is responding to a question about why his campaign is so negative and he has the unmitigated gall to say that the reason he;s hitting Romney on his tax returns – which nobody actually thinks is a big deal, or at least nobody who isn’t already voting for Obama – is TRANSPARENCY. This from a president whose “autobiography” (to the extent a book written about Obama by Bill Ayers could be considered an autobiography) is replete with fabrications, shady characterizations and flat-out lies and who refuses to disclose any of his records. Obama even went so far as to say it’s fair game for presidential candidates to disclose their medical records when he hasn’t done that himself. Watching the interview you can’t help but scream at the reporters for not hammering him on such a breathtaking performance, but on the other hand many of them might well have been too shocked to challenge him.

It’s that disdainful, disrespectful and narcissistic attitude which Klein’s book outlines in detail. It’s evidence that Obama is thoroughly unprofessional as America’s CEO.

Klein called him an amateur, a label he derived from Bill Clinton’s reported characterization of Obama. He sure looked like an amateur in today’s press conference.